The
legendary world of Hopi origins lay
deep below the surface of today's earth. This may seem strange to people brought
up with the concept that the world below is not by any means a place of heavenly
bliss but one of hellish damnation. When one stops to realize that the dominant
features of the vast region of the Hopi world are the magnificent and mysterious
landscapes of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River it is not surprising that
the Hopi concept of heaven should be an ideal nether world.

In the beginning the wide Underworld
beneath the present world was one vast sea, the Hopi have told their descendants
down through the ages. Far to the east and to the west lived two female
deities-the owners of such precious things as seashells, coral, and turquoise.
Each of these Hurung Whuti, as the Hopi called them, lived in a house similar to
a kiva in the Hopi village of today. The Hurung Whuti of the East had one gray
and one yellow fox skin tied to the top of the high ladder which led down into
her kiva-like house, while that of the deity of the West had a large
turtle-shell rattle.

Every day Sun dressed for the early
morning in the gray fox skin, and for the full day he donned the skin of the
yellow fox. He rose from the north end of the kiva of the Hurung Whuti of the
East, slowly passed over the waters of the Underworld, and, after touching the
turtle-shell rattle on her ladder, he descended into the kiva of the Hurung
Whuti of the West.

Eventually the two Hurung Whuti decided
there should be some dry land in the Underworld, and parted the waters so that
land appeared. But Sun could discover no sign of life upon it and he reported
this to the Hurung Whuti of the East, who journeyed over a great rainbow to
confer with her sister of the West. After a long council they decided that they
would create life. They took clay and fashioned a small wren. Placing a piece of
cloth over the wren, they sang certain songs which imparted life to it

Then they instructed Wren to fly here,
there, and everywhere over their newly created land to see if it could find any
signs of other life. Wren failed to see Spider Woman, the deity of the earth,
who lived in her kiva home away to the southwest-so he reported that the whole
land was barren.

Thereupon, the Hurung Whuti of the West
created many birds and animals in the same way as the wren had been created. She
sent them out to inhabit the earth. As her sister had created the birds and the
animals, the Hurung Whuti of the East created a man and woman out of the same
kind of clay and covered them with the same cloth. Again the Hurung Whuti sang
their special songs, and the man and the woman were endowed with life. The two
Hurung Whuti taught the man and the woman a language, and the deity of the East
led them back over the rainbow to her home. There they lived for a short time
before they and their children wandered out over the eastern land to make homes
of their own.

While the Hurung Whuti were busy creating
the birds, the animals, and the first man and woman, Spider Woman decided that
she, too, would create men and women. Thereupon she gave life to all kinds of
people, and with the help of Mockingbird (Yaupa) taught each group its own
language before sending it off to live throughout the Underworld.

After a council with her sister, the
Hurung Whuti of the West decided that she must create more people to inhabit the
lands of the West. These were the ancestors of the Hopi. After this was
accomplished the Hurung Whuti parted and went to live for all time in their
homes under the waters far to the East and far to the West.

The Hopi still remember the Hurung Whuti
and make many prayer offerings to them. Turquoise, seashells, and coral still
serve the Hopi as sacred reminders of those beneficent deities of creation.

This spot is thought by some to be Sipapu, entrance to the Hopi Underworld. It
is a sacred place of pilgrimage for the Hopi, at the bottom of the Canyon of the
Little Colorado above its junction with the Colorado River.